[Ads-l] weird "which"

Wed Jul 8 11:25:53 UTC 2020

Everybody in these parts says / hw /

Except me.

JL

On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 12:23 AM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> > On Jul 8, 2020, at 12:17 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> >> these pun-based titles are almost inevitable
> >
> > Not so much, if you're a speaker of an idiolect that retains voiceless
> w. I
> > was amused by the crude attempt of the "Chicago _which_-hunt," till it
> was
> > pointed out to me that I may be the last, living native-speaker of
> English
> > to pronounce _wh_ as "hw,”
>
> Naah, there ’s a bunch of you.  I’ve been living with one for 43 years.
> But that wouldn’t *really* prevent you from grokking the puns in question,
> including the Great Chicago Which Hunt (their parasession volume on
> relative clauses back in the early ‘70s, for the uninitiated)
>
>
> > except in the case of _whoop_, pronounced
> > "hoop." Cf. cognate German _hupen_, as in the trallic-sign, _NICHT HUPEN_
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 9:52 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
> >
> >> They can’t all be so interpreted.  A couple of earlier papers on it:
> >>
> >> Rudy Loock. 2007. “Are you a good which or a bad which?"
> >>
> >>
> https://www.academia.edu/1436761/Are_you_a_good_which_or_a_bad_which_The_relative_pronoun_as_a_plain_connective
> >>
> >> Burke, Isabelle 2017. "Wicked Which: The Linking Relative in Australian
> >> English." Australian Journal of Linguistics, 37(3), 356-386.
> >> https://tinyurl.com/yb95mxyg
> >>
> >> Yes, these pun-based titles are almost inevitable, which we probably
> could
> >> have guessed that.
> >>
> >> LH
> >>
> >>
> >>> On Jul 7, 2020, at 9:23 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Not so weird, because it can be interpreted as a false start.
> >>>
> >>> Unlike the opening line of Bret Harte's "The Heathen Chinee."
> >>>
> >>> I still say mine is the weirdest of whiches.
> >>>
> >>> JL
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 9:15 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I forgot to mention during this thread that Sara Loss at Oklahoma
> State
> >>>> presented an excellent paper on this “which” (both resumptive and
> >>>> non-presumptive) at the most recent ADS annual meeting in New Orleans,
> >>>> A change in progress: connective “which”
> >>>> I don’t know if she’s publishing it, but there was a lot of nice
> Twitter
> >>>> data she collected for it.
> >>>>
> >>>> And here’s an older (well, last-century) example I noticed a while
> back.
> >>>> It’s from 1999, even though I hadn’t begin to notice these “which”es
> >> until
> >>>> much more recently.   In this weird and wonderful George Saunders
> story
> >>>> reprinted in the Dec. 30, 2019 issue,
> >>>>
> >>>> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/06/21/i-can-speak
> >>>>
> >>>> there’s this:
> >>>>
> >>>> Or say your dog comes up and gives Derek a lick? You could make Derek
> >> say
> >>>> (if your dog’s name is Queenie), “QUEENIE, GIVE IT A REST!”  Which,
> you
> >>>> know what? It makes you love him more. Because suddenly he is
> >> articulate.
> >>>>
> >>>> (Derek is six months old, but equipped with an “I Can SpeakTM” mask
> that
> >>>> allows him to speak, sort of.)
> >>>>
> >>>> LH
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Jun 23, 2020, at 6:41 PM, Bethan Tovey-Walsh
> <accounts at BETHAN.WALES
> >>>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Ah, okay; I see what you mean. Given what you’ve outlined, if it
> isn’t
> >>>> just an accidental omission of a word, perhaps this is a further step
> in
> >>>> normalising a kind of “conjunctive which”? It’s absolutely
> fascinating!
> >>>> Thanks for the example, and for unpacking how it differs from the
> type I
> >>>> cited.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> ___________________________________________________
> >>>>> Dr. Bethan Tovey-Walsh
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Myfyrwraig PhD | PhD Student CorCenCC
> >>>>> Prifysgol Abertawe | Swansea University
> >>>>>
> >>>>> CV: LinkedIn
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Croeso i chi ysgrifennu ataf yn y Gymraeg.
> >>>>> On 23 Jun 2020, 13:35 +0100, Jonathan Lighter <
> wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
> >>> ,
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>>> This seems even weirder to me, Bethan. The examples you give are of
> a
> >>>> kind
> >>>>>> familiar to me from my university teaching days in the late '70s.
> >>>>>> Whatever the syntactical explanation, both "whiches" can be replaced
> >> by
> >>>>>> (and defined as) 'but.' Exx. meaning 'and' are also possible.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> But the current case is not subject to an exclusively lexical
> >> analysis.
> >>>>>> The sentence might be normalized in these ways and maybe others:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> 1. "Including a full-size leave-in elixir, which nine out of ten
> women
> >>>>>> said made their hair appear thicker and fuller in just one week!"
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> 2. "Including a full-size leave-in elixir, and nine out of ten women
> >>>> said
> >>>>>> it made their hair appear thicker and fuller in just one week!"
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> No. 2 is stylistically awkward but perfectly correct. But to get
> from
> >>>> one
> >>>>>> of these normal constructions to the Viviscal version requires a
> >>>>>> strange shift in understanding the meaning of "which." In No. 1 the
> >>>> elixir
> >>>>>> is the focus; in No. 2 both the elixir and the comments are equally
> in
> >>>>>> focus.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> But the Viviscal version seems to focus equally on the elixir and on
> >> the
> >>>>>> hair. It feels like something between subordination and conjunction.
> >>>>>> A simple "and" or "but" won't fix it. And, as I suggested, it's
> >>>> appearance
> >>>>>> in a TV commercial is, well, astounding, because it suggests that a
> >>>> number
> >>>>>> of copywriters agreed that it sounded just fine.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> JL
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 7:09 AM Bethan Tovey-Walsh
> >>>> <accounts at bethan.wales>
> >>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I've noticed this one a lot online, apparently from U.S.-English
> >>>> speakers
> >>>>>>> in particular. I suspect that it's a reanalysis of the standard
> >>>> "which" as
> >>>>>>> a relative pronoun into "which" as a conjunction meaning
> >> approximately
> >>>> "in
> >>>>>>> relation to which", "as a result of which", etc.. So instead of
> >>>>>>> understanding "which" as the object of the main clause, it's
> >>>> understood as
> >>>>>>> a conjunction linking a main clause to the preceding noun phrase.
> >> I've
> >>>> seen
> >>>>>>> quite a few examples along the lines of:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> "She told me to go, which I was not going to do that."
> >>>>>>> "They said they were stealing, which my kids would totally not
> steal
> >>>>>>> anything."
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> It seems to me that the step from "[noun phrase], which I wasn't
> >> going
> >>>> to
> >>>>>>> do" to "[noun phrase], which I wasn't going to do that" is a fairly
> >>>> small
> >>>>>>> one. I'd be interested to hear your opinions.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> BTW
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> ___________________________________________________
> >>>>>>> Dr. Bethan Tovey-Walsh
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Myfyrwraig PhD | PhD Student CorCenCC
> >>>>>>> Prifysgol Abertawe | Swansea University
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> CV: LinkedIn
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Croeso i chi ysgrifennu ataf yn y Gymraeg.
> >>>>>>> On 23 Jun 2020, 10:55 +0100, Jonathan Lighter <
> >> wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
> >>>>> ,
> >>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>> Weird to me, anyway, especially in a pricey, presumably carefully
> >>>> edited
> >>>>>>> TV
> >>>>>>>> commercial for a glamour hair product:
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> "Including a full-size leave-in elixir which nine out of ten women
> >>>> said
> >>>>>>>> their hair appeared thicker and fuller in just one week!"
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> JL
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> --
> >>>>>>>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle
> the
> >>>>>>> truth."
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> --
> >>>>>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> >>>> truth."
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>>>>
> >>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> >> truth."
> >>>
> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > -Wilson
> > -----
> > All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> > come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> > -Mark Twain
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org